As computer programs have advanced in the project management field, duration planning capabilities have been included. In the past, duration planning capabilities have only allowed a user to display and track definite durations. Conventional systems do not allow the user to indicate that durations are tentative or estimated. Users are thus hesitant to use these duration planning capabilities because they make durations seem to be set in stone, and raise false expectations about when projects and tasks will be finished.
In past products, advanced project management users could enter multiple durations for a project or task. These products allowed advanced users to enter best case, worst case, and expected durations. However, these products were complicated and were not user-driven in terms of letting the user express uncertainty about a duration. Instead, these products only allowed the user to input multiple guesses and then the program would combine the multiple guesses. Not only are estimated durations useful in indicating that projects or tasks are estimated, they are easy for novice users to access.
In view of the foregoing, there is a current need in the art to replace a presentation of product or task duration data with quickly recognizable text for identifying that a duration is estimated or tentative. In particular, novice users without extensive project management training need a simple system to indicate that durations for projects and tasks are estimated. There is also a current need for a user to be able to select an option to have new tasks that are created have estimated duration characters until the user chooses to enter a duration value. There is a further need in the art for a user to be able to filter the task list to display only tasks that have estimated durations.